Beaming with pride, the boy nodded. One of the red soldiers, a thin man named Varrius said, "I can help with that repair. I was apprenticed to a blacksmith before I ran off soldiering."
"Fine, good," said Gull. He was discovering powers of diplomacy he never knew. "Helki, Holleb, will you go up to that ant colony? You've got patience and sense, see if they've got brains and can help. They might want to go home too. Tomas, Neith, you've led soldiers, commanded their respect. Will you organize those goblins and orcs? Tell 'em we're planning to leave and they must help. Kick their arses if they grumble. Make spears with fire-hardened points, or whatever you think practical, and drill 'em as shock troops." The soldiers rubbed their hands, glad for the compliments and the hard work ahead. "Bardo, you've traveled, seen much of the Domains. Hunt up that clay statue, hew down the grass and get it upright, see if it can help us. Does everyone have a task?
"Right then. To work!"
It was marvelous to see the troop hurl themselves into their tasks, proving old Brown Bear's saying, "To be happy you must be busy." They were busy, and more.
Armor and weapons polished, kept close at hand, people dispersed over the island.
Within a day, they fell to their first big task.
Having impressed the goblins and orcs, Morven directed the piling of rocks and slash into a barricade, the digging of a long trench. Then the crew waited, each poised with a long pole lever.
As the clockwork beast clumped down the shore, hitting on three legs and missing the fourth, Gull reflected what a strange contraption it was. Was it even alive? It showed no wear, as a millworks would, even bore spots where wood and iron had seemed to scab and heal. Further, it never walked blindly, but steered around large obstacles. More and more, he wondered what lay inside that wood-and-iron head. But short of breaking it open, there was no way to tell.
As the beast approached their barricade, it steered for open sand. Shouting for courage, men and centaurs and orcs stabbed levers at its great iron feet, while Liko put out one huge arm and shoved, ramming the thing sideways. The crash it made shook them off their feet.
Wedged sideways in the trench, the beast mindlessly churned powerful legs.
Then suddenly stopped, the first time anyone had seen it still. Up by the massive head, Stiggur shouted for joy. "Look what I found!"
Behind the beast's ears were four iron rods with polished hardwood heads. The boy pushed one lever forward, and the legs churned. Another, and they churned backward. Then right, then left. Hauling all the levers back stopped it.
"Stiggur," Gull laughed as he tickled the boy's ribs, "you'll be general of this army before long."
For days, they worked from dawn to dusk.
Helki and Holleb struggled to learn the ant soldiers' language. In the meantime, the centaurs drilled, charging and galloping and wheeling in tandem, shouting battle commands, then racing flat out, laughing like young lovers to crash into the surf to kiss. Every morning, Tomas and Neith rousted the goblins and orcs and drilled them in spear work. The trashy fodder whined, ran off when they could, but fear and raps on their bony heads sank in, and the gray-green villains learned. Stiggur not only split leaves with his new mulewhip, he did it while riding the clockwork beast up and down the beach. Morven sharpened a rusty cutlass he'd scrounged from the shipwreck, killed a pig, and fashioned a scabbard from its hide.
Everyone maintained his or her watch without complaint, and slept with armor and weapons close at hand.
And a good idea that proved to be.
Gull dreamed of Lily.
He shared a hut with Morven and Stiggur, lying under palm leaves to stave off the morning chill. Yet many nights he tossed and turned, groping for Lily's sweet soft form, waking when he didn't find her.
Did he love her, he wondered? Did he know what love was? He'd always liked her, enjoyed her company, her chaste yielding body pressed against his. Gull missed her the same as he did his sister. Or more? What was love, really…?
"Gull, wake up!" came a voice. "For pity's sake, wake up!"
Morven swore, "Lord of Atlantis!"
Muzzy-headed, Gull croaked, "What? Get that light out of my face…"
No light. He was shining.
Bolt upright, Gull grabbed his axe, looked at his hands. Outlined ghostly white, they glowed like foxfire on a swamp log. The light grew brighter, spread to his whole body, making him squint and the others fall back.
Neith, the red soldier on watch, had awakened him. "You're being summoned! Through the void, to battle!"
"Me?" gasped the woodcutter, blinded by his own illumination. "Why me?"
Then the earth moved.
CHAPTER 17
Thrown through space, pitched through a void, from one spot to another hundreds of leagues off, from nighttime to day, Gull could only grab his head as images crashed upon him.
In a heartbeat, he saw:
A wide bluff arced out over the sea. There were no towns or farms, no ships on the water, only yellow grass stretching to forest half a mile away. Dozens of feet below the bluff, the ocean roared and churned and thrashed against seaweedy rocks, throwing spume that speckled…
A black basalt monolith, a shiny jet-dark cone tall as a church, rearing above the bluff and ocean, at the bottom of which…
Greensleeves was trussed hand and foot on a low black altar carved into the foot of the monolith, where…
Towser, with a silly-looking pink box tied atop his head by a blue scarf, poised a knife like a sickle above Gull's sister. He was ringed by…
Kem and three new bullies armed with short swords. They guarded the wizard, facing out, staring gape-mouthed at Gull, while…
Far behind him, inland, was Towser's circled wagon train, where his clerk and cook and dancing girls and bard and astrologer and nurse carefully tended their handiwork, so they might not see their master's work at the monolith altar, or…
Standing beside Gull…
Lily, her face white as her dancing togs. She chirped like a baby bird. "Gull?"
"Lily!" Visions and ideas swirled around Gull, stunning him. The sea breeze soothed his sweating brow: it was cooler here than on the tropical island. Then one thought soared like a skyrocket. "You're a wizard!"
"What?" She gaped at her shaking hands. "No, it can't be!"
But Gull caught one hand, forced it open. Faint in the seaside glare, her palms still glowed with the white light that summoned Gull.
"It's true! You brought me here! You've got magic inside!"
"Love of the gods!" The girl was thunderstruck. "That explains… my feelings, those voices! Oh, Mishra! I just missed you so badly! And wished you were here! To stop that!"
She pointed to Towser, who stood with sickle knife poised. He didn't look surprised, and suddenly-more thoughts, like waves sweeping him off his feet-Gull knew why.
Towser knew all along that Lily had wizard potential! He'd canvassed the women of the bawdy house, had each don the silver medallion Lily spoke of: a thing that could detect magic within, even if the wearer were unrealized. Towser had bought her contract, ostensibly as a whore, but in fact, to keep her close, for study or…